I found someone locally who edits with Media Composer and is using the new 3.0 version.

Once I opened my mind to the Avid way of editing, I saw how efficient it can really be.

So I was offered to test it since I'm considering it from Vegas. Brought with me several m2t files I had captured in Vegas to use as I ran through some of the basic tutorials on how to edit in the Avid interface.

Tried importing a single m2t file into my test bin, and the following error message comes up:

Is there a quick. free solution for getting these files working in MC to see what it's capable of for my kind of work or am I going to have to capture my footage from tape all over again - which is a pain since this colleague has to use this software a fair amount and I don't want to take up his time capturing tapes just to try some tutorials..

I have to say I use .m2t files from Vegas in Xpress Pro 5.8.3 without a hitch. So the problem very well may be Avid's and not Vegas'. (I believe I captured them in Vegas 7, not 8.)

If you need to transcode them, I'd recommend TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0. It is simply a brilliant program that I believe everyone should own. It wil transcode anything into almost anything as long as have the codecs registered on your computer. It's price bounces between $70 and $100 depending on if there's a sale running.

Uncompressed - Yikes! I don't have that much HD space at the present time. I'm giving Pro Coder a try on some sample clips and so far it is converting the m2t's I captured in Vegas to m2t's again. I'm going to see if there is a drop in image quality (I hope not). If there are issues, any other file format/codec I should try that can be used by Media Composer that isn't uncompressed? I'm waiting on a fairly large invoice that will pay for some new hard drives to allow for larger files sizes but for now, I'm stuck with my 2x160 Raid0

Peter you might be right - this may very well be an issue specific to Vegas Pro 8.

This is ridiculous. I have been a strong advocate for Vegas Pro as the best professional app for editing solo video journalist content but these issues are leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Not knowing how Vegas captures m2t's, I would do one of 2 or 3 things. Recapture into Avid from the original source tapes or capture the source tapes into CapDVHS which is free and then import the new m2t's into Avid. http://www.videohelp.com/tools/CapDVHS If that doesn't work use MPEGStreamclip to convert the m2t's to an Avid DNXHD file format. http://www.squared5.com/ for free MPEGStreamclip. This would save a few steps and compression hits without using Vegas/Procoder/Avid to go m2t to Vegas to m2t to Avid DNXHD. That's just way too many steps.

I hope this helps,

ps. If you don't have Quicktime Pro in your PC it will cost $25 to download the QT MPEG 2 plug-in from Apple in order for MPEGStreamclip to have full functionality.

Talk about making someone not want to use their product due to the hoops one has to jump through.

MPEGStreamclip tells me:

"One or more transport streams files have a bad size. Do you want to open anyway?
This usually happens when a file is incomplete"

I select ok and then it crashes. So that's not an option - every single clip I have tried has failed. From the sounds of it, I would need to recapture all my footage in MC. That's a lot of tape logging.

Out of curiosity, I tried doing scene splitting with HDVSplit to see if there was some sort of truncation of the Long GOP structure of each clip due to the nature of SONY's HDV capture utility. Sure enough, I did a batch scene split of my clips (132 in all), and MC imports every single one of them.

FYI for those who are thinking of Leaving (Las) Vegas Pro 8 for Media Composer.

exactly right, Cliff. Cineform works because it detects scene changes/splits. It would appear that there is some non-standardization between cam makers as to how to demark a scene change. There's huge timecode discontinuities at the spot where vegas chokes. Nevertheless, if Cineform can get it right, why can't Sony?

My issue is that I don't record on tape, but, rather to an external hard drive. These files come in as m2t's and there's no tape to capture from to "fix" the error.

One other comment....SHEER video is a very good, lossless, compresson scheme that transfers across platform and NLE. For example, to take edits from PC to Mac.

Bill - knowing you come from Vegas land and are now using Media Composer - what's your workflow process when you need to take audio out to something like Sound Forge or Audition to do noise reduction, sweetening, etc?

I do all my own post work and really don't want to have to learn a new audio editing app when I already have Sound Forge 9 and Audition at my disposal.

Cliff...
My workflow hasn't really changed all that much from Vegas.
1-export the audio from Avid as .wav
2-import .wav into SoundForge and process, save result as wav
3-import processed audio file back into Avid, drop it on A3 and A4 tracks, mute A1 and A2.

Still trying my best to be open minded on the Avid way of working - those Vegas habits are not wanting to give up their ghost ;)

Since moving to MC, what pros/cons have you discovered in the the move? I'm really having difficulty giving up Vegas Pro even though it is readily apparent it cannot handle alot of clips on the timeline very well. I really need a solid work flow methodology that I know I can rely on - no matter if short form or long form work.

Some on the Vegas forums have stated to stay away from Avid in general due to its lack of innovation for the past few years, and not knowing much about Avid, I'm not sure whether to keep pursuing Avid MC or just throw my hands up and go to PPro, which still relies upon Cineform for serious editing. I don't have the income to support moving to an MAC/FCS so that's not an option for me.

The only thing keeping me interested in MC is its past reputation as a serious NLE for doing video post work - but since I do it all - both in production and in post, I want as streamlined - yet stable an app as possible.

wide open question, Cliff. In the broadest of terms, I think FCP may ultimately win out as far as an "industry standard". Oh well. some studios are already requiring FCP. I beleive FOX is mandating some kind of NLE software they developed on their own. I think that's rather a dead end. but, what do i know?

In the shorter, more pragmatic term, I'm finding each NLE I use, Avid, Edius and vegas has its pluses and minuses. each does its own thing. avid is great at file management, vegas is good at compositing, edius is rather simplistic, and derives strength for its simplicity. Since there's not much complex compositing I do, I rarely use vegas. Legal colorization is very, very important to me, and I don't trust vegas' cc tool or WFM.

So, I suppose it's a matter of matching the right tool to the right job. For feature length stuff, 7 hrs in the can kind of thing, Avid wins hands down. For straight cuts, quick and accurate CC, I go to edius.

I really felt like you did, Cliff, about Avid. I avoided it, any dabbles I took in the Avid direction were both frustrating and frightening. I had the good fortune to find myself in film school, where avid is taught and used. I've been using avid, with an instructor's help, for 3 months, now. I must say, having been showed a procedure and shortcuts, I am really liking the avid workflow.

Nothing is perfect, of course. Man i really MISS a format agnostic NLE. Both Edius and Avid require (malice) aforethought to use the right format. It is a pitra to realize I want to import something in 720p 30DF and I'm working in 720p 24DF.

I'd go back to vegas in a minute if they ever got their issues ironed out. I monitor for the latest update, hoping their color correction issues and crashes are resolved. Those things combined outweigh all the other advantages vegas once had.

It's an imperfedct world that DEMANDS compromise. It's up to me alone to decide where I want to compromise.

Bill - My mantra is the KISS principle - I want to keep it as simple as possible. One app for editing all video. I don't want to have to deal with multiple apps. I'm willing to deal with certain shortcomings of an app if the trade off is it's a solid application that doesn't have ongoing issues with editing m2t files like Vegas has.

I'm ready to buy - I'm still not sure which way to go. I've edited with both Vegas and Premiere Pro so I understand each of those apps - I've dabbled with FCP, and what little I have done with Avid and Edius, I'm uncertain. Problem I have is in order to really use PPro, you have to go to Cineform, which if using the 10bit version, makes for a pretty expensive NLE setup. I work in an NLE and audio editing app 95% of the time - I do virtually no compositing which was one of the reasons I chose Vegas - but I've been let down again by it and so have many others. There's no high end color space, and as you stated, the color correcting tools are not accurate.

As I see it, I want to use one app that is as broad based as possible so that I run into as few problems moving files back and forth as possible. I'm not flush to do a complete change over to a MAC, so that leaves all the other candidates.

Which one is now the question I need to answer. I have editing to get done and I'm tired of fighting Vegas Pro's inability to not crash if you look at it wrong.

I have Vegas and I have to say, right out of the gate, Avid made more sense to me. What you probably need is a good book on Avid. I've been using "Editing with Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Xpress DV." Granted I'm using Xpress and not MC 3. But it comes with sample projects and really covers the basics very well. It doesn't touch color correction.

Once you get the hang of Avid, you will really not want to go back, IMHO. As for Premiere Pro, you are going to have a harder time getting your project into an online system. A real plus for Avid... and to a lesser degree, FCP.

Also, Avid utilizes video card processing power, which Vegas does not at all. So you should see a significant performance pick-up with Avid.

Most of the issues with Avid are with being slow to support new formats, expensive hardware and detailed computer requirements (most computer problems are solved by using an nVIDIA Qaudro FX video card). But as an NLE itself, it's pretty solid. If a more consumer oriented system crashes, there will be customer blow back. But if Avid consistently crashes doing what it's supposed to do well, they will have Paramount calling them. Of course experienced Avid editors know workarounds and tricks. So I'm NOT saying the system is without faults, flaws and warts. But if it's stable enough for cutting feature films, it's probably good enough for what most of us here are doing, IMHO.